FAUSTIAN, Part I

The Devil opened his shop promptly at half past ten, as he did every morning, Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, he rested—an old habit.

He was a slight man, with a fringe of inky black hair, a few strands of which had been combed over his bald pate. His face was ruddy, giving him a permanent blush, and he wore a suit that would have been stylish in the 40’s, horribly out of date in the 70’s, and was just now rounding back into fashion. Looking at him, you’d think he was someone’s uncle—a second generation American from one of those tiny European countries; a throwback who gave up his fedora around 1986 or so, still smoked two packs a day, and called anyone under the age of 30 “champ” unironically. A passerby would never guess he was the Prince of Darkness.

In Medville, Idaho, however, everyone knew he was the Devil. Indeed, it was such common knowledge that no one really talked much about it. Like any small town, Medville had its cardinal truths: Cloris Devon made the best apple pie in twenty miles; if you needed your car fixed cheap and fast you went to Ernie’s Garage; if you wanted it fixed right (which usually meant meant slow and expensive), you went to Ab’s. The “fresh catch” of the day down at the diner was never fresh; Tim Cavanaugh was a queer; Molly Gordon would give you a handjob if you took her to the drive-in and bought popcorn with extra butter, and the Devil ran the shop on the corner of Bleeker and Main. That’s just the way things were.

Today was Tuesday, which meant Vivaldi on the old record player. Monday was Wagner, Thursday was Mozart, and Saturday was the Beatles, a personal favorite―one of the best deals the Devil had ever made. As the first notes of Vestro Principi Divino warbled through the air, the Devil climbed atop his stool behind the register and flicked a switch. In the window, a neon sign hummed to life, proclaiming a single word in bright orange letters: PAWN

The first customer walked through the door forty minutes later. She was middle-aged, middle class, of middle height and, likely, of middle intelligence. The Devil pegged her as a browser right off and barely looked up from his magazine—Playboy, March 1966: Priscilla Wright in the centerfold, fiction by Fleming and Nabokov, a great interview with Dylan.

The Middling Woman took her time moving up and down the store’s narrow aisles, past a set of excellent saucepans (Issei Sagawa’s personal favorites), and a shelf of books musty with age, three of which were bound in human flesh (though you’d never guess which three). She stopped in front of a small display of ceramic figurines.

They were the sorts of things you’d find in the tacky office of a minister trying to reach out to the youth of the congregation: various porcelain Christs playing football (quarterback, lefty, mobile enough to give himself time in the pocket, but not a scrambler), bowling, shooting pool, and strumming an electric guitar. But the Middling Woman wasn’t looking at Jesus; her eyes were locked on something else: smack dab in the Christ cluster was a devilish red imp sporting a thick, veiny erection almost twice its height.

“Should this be here?” the woman asked, motioning to the fiend, who stood stock still, doing its best to look ceramic.

“Yes.” The Devil replied, already bored with the conversation.

“It’s just—”

“You break it, you buy it.” The Devil said, and the Middling Woman grimaced, quickly pulling her hand away. She moved to the counter, while behind her, the imp blinked, and its erection wilted a bit. Rejection hurts even the damned.

“My husband’s next door at the Radio Shack. We stopped in on our way to Yellowstone. Forgot to pack batteries for the camera, if you can believe that.” She flashed a toothy smile, and the Devil set his magazine down with a sigh. First customer of the day, and she’s a talker.

“I saw your sign and had to come in. I’m real lucky when it comes to pawn shops. Last year in Preston, I bought a whole set of Elvis plates for five dollars. They eBay for almost fifty,” she said. “You got any Elvis plates?”

“No.”

“I just loved Elvis. Skinny Elvis, though; not Fat Elvis.”

“He’s overrated.”

“Why do you say that?” She pouted, but the Devil knew better than to argue rock and roll with a white woman.

The Middling Woman’s eyes drifted to the glass display case filled with various bits and baubles, and the Devil saw a familiar gleam in her eye. He knew what she was going to ask for before the words even left her mouth. “Can I see that ring there?”

The Devil passed the tip of his tongue over his lips and obliged; maybe this woman was more than a browser. The ring was beautiful, a gold band inset with two diamonds, three sapphires and a big, dark, perfectly cut ruby. It was what used to call a blood ruby, before people stopped liking a bit of gore with their jewelry.

“It’s a family heirloom. Alexandra Romanov was wearing this when they shot her.” He handed the ring to the Middling Woman who stared at it hungrily, an expression which didn’t much surprise the Devil. The piece was gaudy even by Tsarist standards―something Dolly Parton might wear today, or Elton John. And, after all, what were the Romanovs but Russia’s very own flamboyant white trash?

“Poor dear. Who shot her?” the Middling Woman asked, not taking her eyes of the ring.

“Peasants,” the Devil replied, “it’s always the peasants.”

“Did she deserve it?”

“We all get what we deserve,” said the Devil and the woman gave an absent nod, barely listening. The Devil could read her face easy enough, though; she wanted the ring—had to have it—she’d do anything for it. It was an expression he knew all too well; the Devil had seen it a million times over the years, dating all the way back to a naked, homely woman standing under a tree, apple in hand. The good old, old, old days.

“It can be yours for a price,” the Devil hissed, and the Middling Woman instinctively reached for her pocketbook.

“How much?”

The Devil shot her a smile; this was his favorite part. “Less than you think,” he soothed. “It’s really a hell of a deal.” He gave her a beat to get the joke, to realize who she was dealing with. But the Middling Woman didn’t; she couldn’t. No sense of humor, no imagination. The Devil was meeting more and more people like that lately. He thought it might have something to do with all those hormones they’re putting in milk these days, or else humanity as a species was just getting dumber. The Devil couldn’t decide and didn’t much care, but it still annoyed him.

“You take Visa? I got Diner’s Club too, or a check—”

“Your soul. The price is your soul.” The Devil huffed; at this point he wasn’t really sure the Middling Woman’s soul was worth having, but business is business. Quotas and all that.

The Middling Woman stared at him for a long moment, hamsters spinning the wheels in her head. Then she laughed. “Ha ha! You had me goin’ there!”

The Devil’s instinct had been right; she was a browser, not a buyer. Not yet. A horn honked outside, one that played a tune, though the Devil couldn’t place it. Probably Elvis. Wannabe-black Elvis. Fucking no-talent-wouldn’t-make-a-deal-to-save-his-life-even-sitting-on-the-toilet-with-his-pants-around-his-ankles Elvis.

“That’s my husband. I gotta run.” The Middling Woman set the ring down and moved for the door.

The Devil grunted.

“Nice place you got here, though,” she enthused. “Maybe I’ll stop back for that ring after we’ve seen the buffalo.” Then she was gone.

The Middling Woman would stop back, the Devil suspected, but not soon, and not for the ring. When she returned she’d be bargaining for something far more valuable. But the price would be the same. The price was always the same.

The Devil spent the next hour doing his books. Accounting was the least glamorous part of his job, though the most important. Once you’d made a deal for someone’s soul you had to keep track of your property. Did the client move? Change their name? Get married? Join a commune and start insisting that everyone call them Willow Blossom? One had to stay up to date. That was especially true now that the Devil did so little debt collection himself. Oh, he’d leave Medville for the big fish—heads of state, serial killers, televangelists, etc.—but the average job fell to one of his imps. The little demons were hard workers, but they weren’t all that bright and their sense of direction was for shit. More than one soul had slipped through the Devil’s fingers because an imp mistook Oak Drive for Oak Street, or messed up a zip code. Things were getting better, though, thanks to technology. God may have omniscience, but now the Devil had Google Maps; he was getting closer all the time.

The second customer of the day was a sixteen year-old girl in love. The Devil didn’t catch many details, as the girl spoke primarily in a stream of high pitched acronyms: “Paul’s my BFF, but he likes Audry! OMG! WTF?!” She sounded like a chipmunk on crystal meth, but he didn’t need a translation. Love was always the same. The Devil produced a contract, and asked the girl to slowly state what she wanted.

She took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. “I want Paul to fall madly in love with me.”

The Devil pricked her finger with a sewing needle and pressed the girl’s digit to the bottom of the page. Contract signed. Deal done.

“So he loves me now?” It was less a question than a statement. The Devil shook his head, hopped off his stool and limped past the girl, toward the shop’s far wall.

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

“I fell,” the Devil replied, keeping his tone light, hoping she’d get it. The girl didn’t even smile, and again, the Devil wondered why he bothered.

He reached up to a high shelf and removed a small flask carved from a hollowed out gourd, stopped with a wad of red cloth. He passed it to the girl, who wrinkled her nose.

“It stinks.”

“It’s a Yoruba love potion. Pour three drops into something Paul’s drinking and he’ll fall madly in love with you. Understand?”

The girl swallowed hard and nodded. As she left, the Devil caught the eye of one of his imps, now completely flaccid, and nodded for it to follow. Paul would fall deeply, madly in love with the girl—“madly” being the key word. Indeed, one sip of that potion, and Paul would be driven insane with lust. A brutal rape and possibly cannibalism of the teenage girl’s corpse would follow in short order. From deal to collection, the Devil estimated he’d have a new soul within six to eight hours. It was respectable, but not a personal best—that would be 15 seconds, when a horribly constipated man had wished to shit, and the Devil made him crap out his intestines. Given the clean-up required, though, that record hadn’t really been worth it.

The Devil barely had time to regain his seat when the third customer entered. He was obese, sweating, and had the look of someone who’d just been told he was dying. Probably because he had just been told he was dying. Pancreatic cancer. Terminal. Two months if the man was lucky.

The deal was made quickly. Plus one soul for the Devil, minus one tumor for the desperate man. Then the Devil placed his palm against the man’s stomach, mumbled some Aramaic he only half-remembered (a joke involving a prophet, a king, a mule and a lusty fan dancer, where the mule makes out best in the end), and told the stunned man that his cancer was gone.

“You should celebrate,” the Devil urged. “They’ve got a great 72 oz steak on special down at the Goldrush.”

The man perked right up and his mouth was watering before he reached the door. In a day or two a doctor would call, informing the fat man he’d mistaken a shadow on the MRI for a tumor, which, as it turned out, was absolutely true. The Devil knew that the fat man never had cancer. He did, however, have heart disease, and while he’d live longer than two months, it wouldn’t be by much.

It was now past noon, and the Devil’s thoughts were turning to lunch when the door burst open and a man in a priest’s frock stormed in. His long gray hair whipped around his head and his eyes were alight with holy fire as he pointed an accusing finger at the Devil. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

“Hello, Walter,” The Devil monotoned. “Been practicing?”

The priest grinned, patting his hair back into place. “I thought I’d make an entrance.”

“You were a regular Christ casting out the money lenders.”

“Really?”

“No, but the volume was good.”

“I’ve been doing voice exercises; the mic at church is on the fritz,” Walter said, holding out a brown paper bag. “Meatloaf sandwiches?”

“It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?” Walter extracted the two Ziploc’d sandwiches while the Devil reached under his counter and produced a bottle of Edradour scotch (1973, aged in an oak cask, a light malt taste with just a hint of almond), and two glasses (from the Idi Amin collection).

The men ate and drank together, exchanging bits of gossip that came mostly from Walter. The Devil knew a lot about Medville, but the town priest knew more. Three glasses of whiskey later, Walter got philosophical, as he always did.

“The end of the world’s coming. Has to be. All the signs are there.”

“Are they?” The Devil sipped from his glass and cocked an eyebrow.

“Have you been watching TV lately?”

“A little. Mostly Fox News.”

“It’s nothing but a parade of sin: lust, fornication, avarice. I mean, they have people eating pig rectums for money! Things weren’t this bad in Sodom, much less Gomorrah. And with all the fighting in the Middle East—”

“As opposed to the peace and harmony that region’s enjoyed for so many years.”

Walter shot him a dark look.

“If the Apocalypse was coming, you’d know about it, right?” he asked.

The Devil didn’t answer, just sipped his scotch.

“Does God talk to you?” There was a desperation in Walter’s voice that made the Devil uncomfortable. The two of them ate lunch together three times a week, if not more, and they always tried to keep things civil. Walter was good at his job, but he wasn’t a fanatic. His faith was balanced with a very human amount of doubt. Today, doubt was winning.

“God never spoke to me,” admitted the Devil, “that was part of the problem.”

“He doesn’t talk to me either. But then, the Devil’s one of the best friends I have. What does that say about me?”

“That you’re a man of taste. I’m an excellent conversationalist.” The Devil refilled Walter’s glass, but the priest kept silent, lost in thought.

“Look at it this way,” the Devil reasoned. “Without evil, there’d be no good. No Him. And without Him, you’d still be working on your father’s farm.”

Walter grimaced as too many memories rushed back too quickly. He drained his glass in a single gulp and then wiped his mouth. “Christ, I fucking hate potatoes.”

ON FRIDAY: FAUSTIAN, Part II

By Andrew Dabb